


The Lonely Hearts Club

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 00:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: A post-Milagro story from Scully's POV





	The Lonely Hearts Club

Loneliness is a choice, she told Padgett, and despite her ordeal on the floor of Mulder’s apartment, it’s that stupid, simple phrase that keeps her from succumbing to her exhaustion. Mulder is in and out of the bedroom like clockwork, like a slow ticking metronome that swings towards her every ten minutes and then retreats once he’s assured she’s still breathing. She doesn’t blame him. If things were the other way around, she would do the same.

There is an ache in her chest that she knows isn’t from having her heart nearly ripped out of her body. That wasn’t real, couldn’t have been real, and she must have imagined the pain and the hooded man and the hands reaching into her chest, bones cracking open, as some sort of metaphorical fever dream. But, the blood, Scully, there’s so much blood. Where did it come from? I don’t know, Mulder, I don’t know. There isn’t so much of a scratch on her.

Like clockwork, he’s back, and she feels the dip in the bed as he sits in front of her curled body. She can burrow herself under his duvet and hide her fists inside the sleeves of a borrowed sweatshirt, but it isn’t good enough to fool him. Not when a steady trickle of tears has begun to flow along the side of her nose.

Mulder squeezes her shoulder and then pets her hair. “Scully?”

“I’m fine,” she whispers.

He rests his splayed hand on the top of her back for a few heartbeats and then he gets up. The loss of him makes her shiver, but then he’s suddenly behind her, his weight on the bed making her slide a few inches towards him. He moves slowly as not to jostle her and then her coiled body is enveloped in a warm embrace. 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to a hospital?” he asks. His cheek is against the back of her head and she can feel her hair get caught up in his lips.

“And tell them what?” she whispers.

He doesn’t answer, but lifts his chin and rests it on top her her head. She tries to make herself even smaller so she can maybe just disappear inside the protective circle of his arms and legs for a little while.

“Do you believe what Padgett wrote?” she asks.

“Which part?”

“Any of it.”

His chest expands against her back, contracts, and then swells again. “You want my honest opinion?” he finally says.

She turns her head slightly and slides her eyes open just a little to look back at him. She nods, but the sudden doubletime thump of her heart betrays her reticence.

“I think Padgett was intrigued by you,” he says. “He became obsessed with the idea of you, but he was nothing but a man with an extensive vocabulary who liked to sit at his typewriter and dip from his endless well of adjectives that suited his own agenda. I think you were a muse that he wanted to shape into someone he wanted you to be simply to be the man he wanted you to want.”

“Any similarities to real people are purely coincidental?”

“I think he saw what you do for a living and assumed a life for you based on cliches. He generalized who you are as only a man can generalize a woman.”

Scully felt the pull of her brow lifting in response. “As only a man can generalize a woman?”

“You don’t need me to tell yo, Scully. I’m sure you’ve seen it a thousand times. I mean I’ve...how many times have people assumed you’re my wife? How many times have you been looked at sideways when snap on the gloves and announce you’re there to do an autopsy? A hundred? A thousand?”

“Too many to count, but what does that have to do with Padgett?”

“It has everything to do with Padgett. He wanted to think he was different than other men because he looked past the business suit, but in the end he failed to see the entire package, which makes him exactly like all the men he thought he was above.”

She let’s that soak in for a moment and thinks back on men like Jack and Daniel, who found her assertiveness attractive, but only as a personal challenge to unleash her femininity only to keep her tethered to it. Suddenly, her aspirations weren’t so attractive anymore and she felt like she was being reduced and belittled for wanting to be more than just someone’s girlfriend. 

She sighs. “You’re talking about the Madonna-whore complex, aren’t you?”

“I’m no Freudian, but I can bet you dollars to donuts Freud would call it a classic case.”

“I’d agree with you except…”

“Except what?”

“Nevermind, you’re right.”

She can’t believe she’s actually having this conversation and she needs to put a stop to it before it goes even further. It was embarrassing enough to have to read about herself through the eyes of a lovelorn pseudo-stalker, but now to discuss it with Mulder was simply mortifying. She shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. 

But, if she snuffs out this line of dialogue, would Padgett be right? He all but described her as a prude - dressed up in poetic prose, but a prude nonetheless - and clamming up now would only prove his point. And it isn’t so much the accusation of being repressed that annoys her, it’s that he made it seem as though the only explanation for why she keeps a tight rein on her emotions is simply professionalism. Of course, he also insinuated that professionalism kept her from being attractive and that just really chafes. 

Professionalism has nothing to do with it. Professionalism went out the window somewhere around the same time she admitted she would put her career on the line for Mulder. Professionalism was practically non-existent when it came down to it. She was at this very moment, quite unprofessionally lying in his bed, in his borrowed clothes, taking solace in his arms. Fuck professionalism, and fuck Phillip Padgett too.

She tries not to think about how good and right it feels to be in Mulder’s bed and in his arms. It’s what she’s been fighting against for many months now, back when she realized she saw more in Mulder than she had the day before. She has a list a mile long of reasons why suddenly getting involved with Mulder would be a bad idea, but at a certain point, she had to be honest with herself and accept that the underlying theme of that list was purely her own fear.

“I’m afraid,” she admits out loud, in a whispered breath.

“Of what?”

She can’t answer. She can only try to breathe normally and slow the pounding in her chest and the quick-hot flow of blood through her veins. She could confess the feelings that have been bubbling up inside her. She could confess that there was at least one thing Padgett had right; she did want to let someone in. Not just someone though. Mulder. And then she remembers that Padgett has already stolen the one thing she’s been trying to permit herself to give to her partner.  _ Agent Scully is already in love _ . Damn him.

“Your heart is racing,” Mulder says, pressing his chest a little more firmly to her back. 

“It still hurts.”

“Are you sure you won’t let-”

“I’m fine.”

Mulder sighs and turns his cheek to the back of her head. They’re both quiet for a few minutes. He’s lost in his concern for her and she’s lost in the dilemma of how to talk to her partner about how she feels without making a fool of herself in the process.

The night drags on and she stays silent. She feels too raw and vulnerable to start professing her feelings now and Mulder...she’s almost positive that even if by chance, Mulder feels the same way that she does, he’d be reluctant to act on those feelings tonight, not with what she’s just been through. She chooses loneliness for a little longer knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that it won’t be for long, it just has to be for now. In this moment though, in his bed, half-asleep in his arms, loneliness never felt so good.

The End


End file.
